Mobile Asia Expo kicks off in Shanghai

People are now spending more time on their smartphones surfing the internet than just making calls. Thanks to new technologies, smartphones are multifunctional.

Buying a drink on the street or passing through a metro entrance, you don't need plastic cards any more. Just swipe cellphone. This part of the Mobile Asia Expo is called "Connected City". All the functions used here employ a new technology called Near Field Communication or NFC. That can connect a smartphone to something nearby, within 10 centimeters.

Visitor Clement Lam said, "It is really convinient for me, not needing to take my wallet. It's handy to be able to just use a cellphone."

Visitor Zhang Xu said, "We needed use a lot of cards before, but now a cellphone alone can solve all the problems. If I want to buy ticket at the train station, I only need to swipe my cellphone."

Japanese electronics giant Sony made the global announcement of a new smartphone using NFC technology here in China. A Sony official says it's an inevitable trend.

Dennis Van Schie, Senior VP of Sony Mobile Communications, said, "It follows the way human beings communicate. It's first through voice interaction, then through text, then through photos and videos. And of course, the next phase wilL be data, right? Data and intelligence through sensors, through proximity, through your smartphone truly understanding what you like? What you eat? Where you go? What you want?"

The number of Chinese smartphone users reached nearly 400 million by the end of last year, and has grown by more than 7 percent over the past four months. One telecom service provider expects competition in China's market will become even more fierce in the near future.

Suk-Chare Lee, CEO of Korea Telecom, said, "People will have different experiences and will enjoy all those content available through smartphones. We have to utilize the opportunity to say make the market as big as possible, so that world customers will try to sell and buy the virtual goods."

The Mobile Asia Expo will run through June 28th. The 200 exhibitors are expected to draw more than 200,000 visitors.